Karen Learn’s federal enchantment was denied and her state retrial can proceed with all three fees, together with homicide, intact.
“The district court’s decision is affirmed,” Choose Lara E. Montecalvo wrote within the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the First Circuit’s resolution issued Thursday afternoon. “Read’s motion to stay the state court proceedings pending appeal is denied as moot.”
The 22-page resolution was the Learn protection staff’s newest in a collection of losses to dismiss her case or at the least delay the retrial scheduled to start Tuesday at Norfolk Superior Courtroom in Dedham.
Learn, 45, of Mansfield is charged with second-degree homicide, manslaughter whereas working a motorized vehicle beneath the affect, and leaving the scene of an accident inflicting dying. She’s accused of killing Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, her boyfriend of about two years on the time, on Jan. 29, 2022. She was tried final 12 months, however that resulted in mistrial.
Shortly after the July 1, 2024, mistrial, the protection staff stated that members of the trial jury had come ahead to say that the jury, regardless of three more and more assertive notes indicating an deadlock, was solely held on the manslaughter cost and was able to acquit on the opposite two fees, together with manslaughter, however didn’t know they might return a partial verdict.
This, the protection staff says, implies that to retry Learn on the 2 fees the jury would have acquitted her on could be a violation of her constitutional protections from Double Jeopardy — or being tried once more on the identical fees after being discovered harmless.
The argument failed first earlier than the trial decide, Beverly J. Cannone, who will preside over the retrial as effectively. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Courtroom then upheld Cannone’s ruling. The protection then went to the federal district court docket in Boston for a habeas corpus argument — they wished the federal courts to free Learn of unjust prosecution, based mostly on the Double Jeopardy argument.
U.S. District Courtroom Chief Choose F. Dennis Saylor IV denied the Learn argument. On Thursday, the First Circuit backed up his resolution.
Cannone additionally on Wednesday denied an unrelated protection movement to dismiss the case on the grounds of “extraordinary governmental misconduct.”
The arguments
The protection says that Cannone “made a ‘precipitous decision’ in declaring a mistrial,” Montecalvo wrote in abstract, and “did not consider alternatives to declaring a mistrial or even discuss the possibility of a mistrial with the parties.”
Had Cannone questioned the jurors additional as to their verdict, the protection argues, it might have been found they had been really able to acquit.
Saylor in his denial of the habeas request wrote that for Cannone to inquired additional would have been tantamount to coercion of the jurors to succeed in a call even when they hadn’t and is prohibited by state legislation. He discovered there was “manifest necessity” to order a mistrial. The First Circuit affirmed this discovering.
The prosecution argues that “the trial court took careful steps,” Montecalvo summarized, “… and only declared a mistrial when it was clear, after the third such note, that the jury was truly deadlocked.”
The First Circuit discovered that the protection argument is barely bolstered by post-trial info that was not out there when Cannone needed to make her resolution. The court docket discovered that Cannone adopted protocol.
“On their face, the notes appear to make a series of definite assertions that the jury could not reach any unanimous verdict. Thus, while it would have been within the court’s discretion … to inquire into the existence of a partial verdict, there was no apparent need to do so here,” Montecalvo wrote. “ … Considering the information the court had before it, there was no readily apparent alternative to declaring a mistrial.”
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